Business organizations such as vendors have a number of branches or franchises, e.g., vendor facilities, may advertise uniformly across the geographic areas in which they maintain their facilities. Typically such advertising entails little, if any, specific contact information for each specific vendor facility, as this is often impractical, especially where the vendor maintains many facilities across cities, states, or even countries. Rather, the vendors may rely on the individual facilities to each communicate contact information on a local basis to potential customers. For example, each facility may register their specific contact information, e.g. a telephone number, address, etc., with a local business directory and/or advertise on a local level to make potential consumers aware of the presence of that particular branch, and how to contact them. This effectively requires customers seeking assistance from the vendor to seek out contact information for a local facility themselves.
The process of developing a local customer base for each facility in a network of a particular vendor, even with a generally uniform global advertising strategy, nevertheless relies at least in part upon efforts of the potential customers in locating contact information for a particular branch. As the individual branches may be effective to varying degrees in their efforts to locally advertise and communicate contact information to potential customers, the vendor may have difficulty developing a uniform customer base across geographic areas where several branches are located. Additionally, customers may be frustrated when they attempt to contact a branch that may be physically closer, and thus are assumed by the customer to be the most convenient for them, when in reality the closer branch is preoccupied or less effective at providing the desired services or goods. At times, other nearby branches may in actuality more effectively serve the customer's needs. Further, where any differences exist in the level of goods or services offered by local vendor branches, customers will be generally forced to communicate individually with each branch to determine whether their needs for particular goods or services can be met by that particular branch.
Accordingly, there is a need for enabling potential customers of a business organization with different geographic locations to contact an appropriate local branch associated with the business organization without requiring the customer to seek out contact information for a particular branch.